Traube, Isidor

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TRAUBE, ISIDOR

TRAUBE, ISIDOR (1860–1943), German physical chemist. Traube, who was born in Hildesheim, worked at the universities of Heidelberg and Bonn. From 1901 he was professor at the Technische Hochschule of Berlin, but left Germany in 1934 and settled in Edinburgh.

Traube related the laws governing the behavior of dilute solutions to the gas laws, actually anticipating Van't Hoff and Arrhenius, the Dutch and Swedish physical chemists. Traube also propounded that absorbed films on liquid surfaces obeyed two-dimensional analogies of the gas laws, a proposition that was substantiated 30 years later. He published numerous papers on surface phenomena. His theory of the action of drugs had a positive effect on pharmacological research for years. The effect of organic compounds on the surface tension of water is governed by "Traube's Rule."

[Samuel Aaron Miller]